The Chinese Embassy Bombing

Updated May 10, 1999 12:01 a.m. ET

It is tragic that four Chinese citizens lost their lives in Yugoslavia this weekend in the course of a conflict so remote from China that their sudden and unexpected deaths will have been all the more shocking to their grieving families. The accidental bombing of China's embassy has an extra bitter dimension of the sort that comes with so-called "friendly-fire" deaths, as in the Gulf War when Allied bombers killed members of a British unit on the ground in the mistaken belief that they were Iraqis. Presumably, the Chinese government kept its Belgrade embassy operating through the past weeks of bombing...